The Brummagem Philhellene

Extract

You will not find the name of the Philhellene George Fanshawe Chubb in the Dictionary of National Biography, although that does include a purely mythical Philhellene Kirkman Finlay. Though he lost his life in the cause of Greece, Chubb is never mentioned by Finlay, Trikoupes, Gordon, or by any other historian of the Greek Revolution. He appears, like Melchizedek, to have had no ancestors and no posterity, and whether he was really a native of Birmingham or not we cannot tell. We know nothing about his family or his education or his profession, or indeed anything at all about him till he became a Philhellene.